Editorial
Gov. Rick Perry knows it, and he wants state pension funds to realize it as well.
The governor is asking multibillion-dollar state pension funds for a plan to divest any holdings in companies that do direct business with Iran, the Express-News reported.
Perry gave them 30 days; we hope they comply.
“The examples we set in Texas can have international ramifications,” Perry said at an appearance in Dallas. “We can be an agent of change just as the anti-apartheid divestment movement led to changes in South Africa in the 1980s.”
The call comes about two months after the Legislature passed a law authorizing the Teacher Retirement System and the Employees Retirement System to divest assets of firms doing business in Sudan.
Perry is now asking the same systems for similar actions against companies that do business with Iran.
Both moves are morally and even financially proper; if state pension funds cannot achieve high rates of return without supporting nations that sponsor terrorism, they may be in the wrong business.
Investing in such businesses also represents the height of hypocrisy, helping to prop up nations whose practices we claim to abhor.
“We’re not actually at war with Iran,” Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, told the newspaper. “We need to kind of be taking care of Texas, and we’ve got a federal government that should do all that other stuff.”
Officials can take care of Texas, however, without abandoning principle elsewhere around the globe.
